Publications

April 2000
Article

The Fable of Fisher Body

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber

General Motors' (GM) acquisition of Fisher Body is the classic example of market failure in the literature on contracts and the theory of the firm. According to the standard account, GM merged vertically with Fisher Body in 1926, a maker of auto bodies, because of... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Failure; Contracts; Vertical Integration; Market Transactions; Investment; Trust; Production; Assets; Supply Chain; Opportunities; Technology; Auto Industry

2001
Article

From Guilford to Creative Synergy: Opening the Black Box of Team Level Creativity

By: T. R. Kurtzberg and T. M. Amabile

Previous research, from Guilford's founding tradition to more modern research on individual creativity and general group processes, falls short of adequately describing team-level creativity. Alhough researchers have addressed brainstorming in groups with mixed... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Groups and Teams; Theory; Research; Organizational Culture

July 1998
Teaching Note

Hawthorne Plastics, Inc. TN

By: Paul W. Marshall, John S. Hammond and William L Berry

Teaching Note for (9-171-004). View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Production; Cost; Quality; Theory; Management Practices and Processes; Decisions

March 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Lehigh Steel

By: V.G. Narayanan and Laura Donohue

Lehigh Steel is a specialty steel manufacturer that plummeted from record profits to record losses in less than three years, driven by an inability to distinguish between profitable and unprofitable business. The scale and growth of service activities and overhead... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Product; Cost; Activity Based Costing and Management; Profit; Accounting; Corporate Finance; Steel Industry

October 1995 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Cambridge Consulting Group: Bob Anderson

By: Jay W. Lorsch and John J. Gabarro

Describes the situation facing the head of a rapidly growing industry-focused group within a consulting company. Highlights the dilemmas of being a "producing manager" (i.e., a professional who has both individual production as well as management responsibilities).... View Details

Keywords: Management; Managerial Roles; Agency Theory; Consulting Industry

March 1995 (Revised April 1995)
Background Note

Scope of the Corporation, The

By: David J. Collis

Describes analyses that determine the appropriate limit to the scope of the firm. Examines both the production cost justification for firm diversification--economies of scope and shared resources, and the governance cost justification for including transactions inside... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Agency Theory; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Expansion

January 1995
Case

Understanding User Needs

By: Marco Iansiti and Ellen Stein

Presents an introduction to methods for understanding user needs in product development. Describes a number of techniques including the use of focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, the Kano method, Lead User analysis, the Product Value matrix, OFD, etc. Provides a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Product Development; Mathematical Methods

Article

Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand: Impediments to Economic Activity, Market Failures, and Profitability

By: Dennis Yao

In this paper it is argued that failures of the competitive market are necessary conditions for supranormal profitability. Three fundamental causes of these market failures-production economies and sunk costs, transactions costs, and imperfect information-are developed... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Markets; Failure; Profit; Cost; Information; Market Transactions; Competition; Strategy; Production

Article

Measurement of Productivity Improvements: An Empirical Analysis

By: R. Banker, S. Datar and M. Rajan

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Theory

July 1986 (Revised April 1989)
Background Note

Note on Sources of Comparative Advantage

By: David B. Yoffie and John J. Coleman

After Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin's propositions about the sources of comparative advantage were empirically challenged by Wassily Leontief, scholars set out to explain the "Leontief paradox" by developing alternative theories on the sources of comparative... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage

April 1983
Article

Productivity and Labor Unions: An Application of the Theory of Self-Enforcing Contracts

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Keywords: Labor Unions; Contracts; Theory

August 1980
Article

An Activity Analysis Approach to Unit Costing with Multiple Interactive Products

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Hiroyuki Itami

Keywords: Theory; Product

1980
Working Paper

Components of Manufacturing Inventories: A Structural Model of the Production Process

By: Alan J. Auerbach and Jerry R. Green

This paper presents a structural model of production and inventory accumulation based on the hypothesis of cost minimization. It differs from previous attempts in several respects. First, it integrates the analysis of input inventories with output inventories, treating... View Details

Teaching Interest

DESIGN THEORY AND PRACTICE ES285

By: Roberto Verganti

Any organization, business or venture grounds its value on how “meaningful” are its products (functionally, symbolically and emotionally). Design Theory and Practice (DTP) empowers students to create products that are meaningful, to people who use them and to... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Design; Leadership; User Experience Design; Design; Strategy; Technology; Product Design

Research Summary

Do Prices Determine Vertical Integration?*

By: Laura Alfaro

What is the relationship between product prices and vertical integration? While the literature has focused on how integration affects prices, this paper provides evidence that prices can affect integration. Many theories in organizational economics and industrial... View Details

Forthcoming
Article

Measurement and Effects of Bank Exit Policies

By: Daniel Green and Boris Vallée

We study whether exit policies by financial institutions have financial and real consequences on the firms they target, using bank coal exit policies as a laboratory. In contrast to theories assuming high capital substitutability, we find large effects of these... View Details

Keywords: Coal Power; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Policy; Energy Industry